Antonio "Tony" Mendez, a former CIA technical operations officer who helped rescue six U.S. diplomats from Iran in 1980 and was portrayed by Ben Affleck in the film "Argo," has died in Frederick. He was 78.

Secretary of State Colin Powell used to talk about the Pottery Barn Rule: If you break something, such as a foreign government, you’ve bought it. Unfortunately, the U.S. has a long history of intervening and leaving chaos behind. This is what I call the Blowback Rule of unintended consequences.

Over the next three months, the fate of the Iran nuclear agreement and U.S. relations with Iran fall to President Trump and congressional leaders. There is no one as important as Sen. Ben Cardin in determining the fate of this relationship.

Sen. Ben Cardin will relinquish his role as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ending a run that began almost three years ago with the tricky politics of the Iran nuclear deal.

An Iran sanctions bill co-sponsored by Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin is currently making its way through the Senate. A vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee could come within days. If approved in its current form, the bill could undermine the nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers.

As President Trump continues to reach out to the world's despots — praising the "fantastic job" done by Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi; saying he would be "honored" to meet with North Korea's Kim Jong Un; inviting death squad promoter and Philippines' president Rodrigo Duterte to the White House; congratulating Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on maintaining rule; and nurturing a bromance with Russia's Vladimir Putin — he would do well to keep in mind their perennial

One of the scariest parts of the very scary world we live in today is the responsibility that we and our allies bear for the creation of the enemies confronting us. This is most dreadfully true in Iraq, where thousands of Americans have died and more than $1 trillion have been wasted on a war that had no just cause, where the vacuum created by the 2003 invasion was filled by Islamic jihadists and a government and armed force more loyal to Iran than to the United States.

Hatred of the press may not be the only thing that Donald Trump has in common with Richard Nixon. Going behind a sitting president's back to interfere in foreign policy initiatives could be another if the full truth ever comes to light about contacts between Mr. Trump's people and the Russians interfering in the U. S. election. In Nixon's case it may have cost American lives.

A day after an executive order halted the flow of refugees to the United States, immigrant advocates in Maryland and elsewhere condemned a policy they said punishes innocent people fleeing violence while failing to make the nation more secure

Iran has barred U.S. wrestlers, including Olympic gold medalist Kyle Snyder of Woodbine, from competing in this month's Freestyle World Cup in response to President Donald Trump's executive order forbidding visas for Iranians.